Evaluating Multimedia Projects: The BasicsWriter's Web
(printable version here)

The guidelines, currently being used for Joe Essid's courses that use wikis, are very much under construction as students supply feedback as co-learners.That's a little scary for a professor. But some essentials seem reasonable for all sorts of projects that employ interactive multimedia:

Things that hurt a project badly:

An old palLack of clear navigation: Every site has a clear "look" so you know that you have not surfed away. While our Writer's Web pages have a sidebar feature, the wiki I use for my Eng. 383 class does not. So I have to embed a navigation menu on EACH page and make sure the links work.

Broken links: DON'T have them. Check your links regularly.

Lack of interaction: Wikis enable instant interaction through the commentary feature at the bottom of the page. Blackboard has a group discussion tool. Adding interactive features to a project enables it to grow. Have you taken advantage of the features in the interface to enable, or just invite, feedback?

Images that have no text-tag: Visually impaired computer users often employ screen-reading software. Be certain that every photograph uses an "ALT" tag that says, in a few words, what the subject is. Example: note how in this picture, from my Koinup photo site, you get the text "an old pal" when you "mouseover" the photo.

Annoyances:

Lack of page names: Note that if you were to author a Web page outside a wiki, the default page-name is "untitled" and that is what goes into a bookmark or favorite in someone's browser. All Web pages have a file name (usually pagename.html) but what shows in the title bar? Be sure you always have an HTML page a name. If you do work outside the wiki, talk to me and I'll show you how to be sure your pages have titles as well as file-names.

Failure to properly align close-up photographs: You must always employ the Rule of Thirds unless you are trying to achieve a certain artistic or rhetorical effect with a shot.

Failure to think about CRAP: That's Contrast (or Color, for graphic design) Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. Remember that Web projects do not automatically align to a left margin, have indentations, paragraph breaks, and the like. I expect your texts to:

  • have a line of blank space between paragraphs,
  • align to the left side of the screen,
  • avoid cutesy, random, and pointless uses of color, font, and size,
  • have clean margins. You may have to manually connect lines when pasting text from another program. Do not let this happen:

Line of text pasted in that goes to the right margin

short line

short line

short line

Line of text pasted in that goes to the right margin

Line of text pasted in that goes to the right margin

short line

etc.

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